Fighting art exhaustion during the school year

As I have mentioned many times in my various pockets of the internet, the school year is always very difficult for me because it takes away all my time draw.  Opportunities to work on my graphic novel, Everdusk, are few and far between, let alone any other projects.

Unfortunately, being forced kicking and screaming away from my art has some pretty hard consequences.  I have found that not drawing for days on end leads without fail to miserable art block.

I've found ways to help combat this.  Carrying around a small notebook to doodle and sketch life drawings in (which is just good practice anyway) helps a lot.  It keeps my eye and my hand in good practice when I don't have time to pull out the ol' tablet.

Even when I do have time to bring out my tablet, however, I have found that college completely sucks my artistic drive dry.  Between classes, schoolwork, and theater, I am exhausted in my free time, and feel like doing little more than scrolling around on the internet when I could/should be working on my art.

So how can I fight against this art exhaustion and still be productive, even if I'm not working on my larger projects?

Break out of your normal art and experiment a bit.

Whenever I DO draw during the school year, I've found that it's often on quick side projects with styles and experiments that 1) do not take much time (maybe about an hour or so) and 2) are very different from my normal fare.

Just in the past two weeks, I produced three pieces of art in my spare time with some different techniques.

This is a wallpaper I put together for an anime promo that was released recently.  It's a French anime that's due to be released in 2013 that's already gathered a decent fanbase.  More info and credit for the images can be found on the deviantART page here.

A drawing of Merida from Pixar's Brave.  I actually drew this in permanent marker on a large piece of paper in my dorm hallway and was pleased enough to take a picture of it; I then colored it in Photoshop.  Credit for the textures found on deviantART here.

Both of these are very different from my typical style.  They weren't terribly time-consuming.  But they WERE fun to make and let me stretch my "art muscles" a bit!

So if you're feeling stuck or don't have much time for art, don't be afraid to try something different.  You just might find that it'll open you to new techniques and ideas and keep you from falling into the frustration of art block!